Jennifer wrote up about the swine flu outbreak that has emptied Mexican streets and has hit close to home, with a confirmed case of the illness right here in my own home borough of Queens, NYC. Thankfully swine flu isn’t something you can get from eating pork, porque everytime I hear the words “swine flu” I want some chuletas or pernil.

And now swine flu is the new racial profiling:

Secretary Janet Napolitano also said border agents have been directed to begin passive surveillance of travelers from affected countries, with instructions to isolate anyone who appears actively ill with suspected influenza.

In other words don’t stand close to a coughing Mexican? Or if you see a Mexican sneeze call ICE?

While I am making light of the fear being instilled in the global population, what is more scary is thinking how an illness common in pigs, jumped to humans, and somehow got mixed with strains of avian flu as well. Is such an illness due to natural mutations, something created in a lab or something created by the way we consume?

The Mex Files writes about how the likely source of this outbreak of swine flu is the large factory confined animal feeding operations (aka CAFO’s).

In the last several years, U.S. hog conglomerates have opened giant swine CAFOs ['confined animal feeding operations'] south of the border, including dozens around Mexico City in the neighboring states of Mexico and Puebla. Smithfield Foods also reportedly operates a huge swine facility in the State of Veracruz, where the current outbreak may have originated. Many of these CAFOs raise tens of thousands of pigs at a time. Cheaper labor costs and a desire to enter the Latin American market are drawing more industrialized agriculture to Mexico all the time, wiping out smaller, traditional farms, which now account for only a small portion of swine production in Mexico.

“Classic” swine flu virus (not the novel, mutated form in the news) is considered endemic in southern Mexico, while the region around the capital is classified as an “eradication area” – meaning the disease is present, and efforts are underway to control it…

So swine flu isn’t new. This mutated form is however.

Pero seriously, if you feel sick, the normal rules apply, wash you hands, cover your mouth, and please stay home. Hell if you’re not sick you should still wash your hands and cover your mouth. Common sense.